I love digital photography. Buying my first digital SLR back in 2001 opened the path to running a bondage site commercially, and I love the clean and controllable results that come out of the digital workflow. But even I have to admit that there is something visceral about physical film photography - especially polaroids. They are almost completely outside your control - the cameras are very simple and mostly automatic- so all you can do is frame and push the button, and wait a minute to see what you have.
If you're old, they also have a connotation of delightful sleaze, sex games and crime - because they didn't need to go to a film processing lab or a darkroom, anyone could use them to take photos of whatever they wanted.
So when I got hold of an instax camera and some boxes of film, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to shoot a really dirty set with them - something that you'd definitely not have wanted anyone else's eyes to see, back in the day. Which is why Ariel and I came up with this idea to shoot a set like it was a sex crime.
Ariel is the innocent, 70's horror film girl vacationing in a remote cabin being watched by a sinister stalker. I love the way the slow shooting rate of the polaroids and the fact I only had 30-something shots of film to play with made us think out step-by-step what we wanted to show, it's got the feeling of a staccato unfolding of a story than we usually manage with digital, where it's always easy to just take another shot. And since there was no "chimping" at the results between shots as we had to work fast with Ariel already tied, there was no chance to go back and take a shot again - I didn't have the frames to spare or the time.
Of course, to get the images to you I had to digitise them. I don't even have a film scanner any more, so I chose to go with the option of photographing the shots physically laid out on a table, to hopefully give you the feeling we got of it all being a bit rough and ready- but like a kidnapper documenting the deed.
There were only 38 (ish) physical photos but I took more than one shot of each just in case, which is why the set looks bigger
It's also got butt-plugs and dildos going on, in a much rougher and edgier storyline than the RE usual. We loved it, we hope you do too!